Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions must be spoken. Humanness came of age when man asked the first question. Social stagnation results not from a lack of answers but from the absence of the impulse to ask questions.

When the angels present themselves, the devils abscond.

Arabic Proverb

Her beauty was like a pulsating silence full of music.

Lionel Suggs

You know what I want in a woman, Paul? What's that? A friend. A true friend; someone who knows me and loves me anyway. You know, like when I'm through putting my best foot forward, she's still there, still the same.

Don Miller

In Sarajevo in 1992, while being shown around the starved, bombarded city by the incomparable John Burns, I experienced four near misses in all, three of them in the course of one day. I certainly thought that the Bosnian cause was worth fighting for and worth defending, but I could not take myself seriously enough to imagine that my own demise would have forwarded the cause. (I also discovered that a famous jaunty Churchillism had its limits: the old war-lover wrote in one of his more youthful reminiscences that there is nothing so exhilarating as being shot at without result. In my case, the experience of a whirring, whizzing horror just missing my ear was indeed briefly exciting, but on reflection made me want above all to get to the airport. Catching the plane out with a whole skin is the best part .) Or suppose I had been hit by that mortar that burst with an awful shriek so near to me, and turned into a Catherine wheel of body-parts and (even worse) body-ingredients? Once again, I was moved above all not by the thought that my death would 'count,' but that it would not count in the least.

Christopher Hitchens

If government knew how, I should like to see it check, not multiply, the population. When it reaches its true law of action, every man that is born will be hailed as essential.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The great commitment is so much easier than the ordinary, everyday one -- and can all too easily shut our hearts to the latter. A willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice can be associated with, and even produce, a great hardness of heart. You thought you were indifferent to praise for achievements which you would not yourself have counted to your credit, or that, if you should be tempted to feel flattered, you would always remember that the praise far exceeded what the events justified. You thought yourself indifferent -- until you felt your jealousy flare up at his naive attempts to make himself important, and your self-conceit stood exposed. Concerning the hardness of the heart -- and its littleness -- let me read with open eyes the book my days are writing, and learn.

Dag Hammarskjold, Markings

Of all tasks of government the most basic is to protect its citizens against violence.

John Foster Dulles

Life stand still here.

Virginia Woolf

The philosopher with his two eyes sees double, so is unable to see the unity of the Truth.

Mahmud Shabistari

Telling a teenager the facts of life is like giving a fish a bath.

Arnold H. Glasow

There is joy in work. There is no happiness except in the realization that we have accomplished something.

Henry Ford

Religion is the opium of the poor

Ernest Hemingway